Robert sengstacke abbott biography of abraham lincoln

Five years later it became a weekly publication. Today it is a digital publication only. By promoting liberty and racial equality, the Defender has left a lasting legacy for millions of blacks. Ultimately, it is a story of perseverance amidst a long historical backdrop of racism and discrimination in America. Updated June, 11 Jul 16th, Turning The Editorial Leadership Page.

Updated June, 11 5. A key part of his distribution network was made up of African-American railroad porters , who were highly respected among Black people, and by they organized a union as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They often sold or distributed the paper on trains. Defender circulation reached 50, by ; , by ; and more than , by the early s.

Credited with contributing to the Great Migration of rural southern Black people to Chicago, the Defender became the most widely circulated black newspaper in the country. It was known as "America's Black Newspaper. From the early 20th century through , 1. They were eager to know about conditions, to find housing, and to learn more about their new lives in cities.

Most were from rural areas of the South. From to all the southern states had passed constitutions or laws that raised barriers to voter registration and effectively disenfranchised most Black people and many poor whites. They were utterly closed out of the political systems. Schools and other public facilities reserved for Black people were typically underfunded and ill-maintained.

Legislatures imposed Jim Crow conditions, producing facilities for Black people that were "separate" but never "equal" referring to the Plessy v. Ferguson case, in which the US Supreme Court ruled that segregated facilities, such as railroad cars providing "separate but equal" conditions, were constitutional. The northern and midwestern industrial centers, where Black people could vote and send children to school, were recruiting workers based on expansion of manufacturing and infrastructure to supply the US's expanding population as well as the war in Europe, which started in The Pennsylvania Railroad and others were expanding at a rapid rate across the North, needing workers for construction and later to serve the train passengers.

The Defender told stories of earlier migrants to the North, giving hope to disenfranchised and oppressed people in the South of other ways to live.

Robert sengstacke abbott biography of abraham lincoln

Abbott, through his writings in the Chicago Defender , expressed those stories and encouraged people to leave the South for the North. In addition, Abbott wrote about how awful a place the South was to live in comparison to the idealistic North. Abbott's words described the North as a place of prosperity and justice. Abbott was a fighter, a defender of rights.

He listed nine goals as the Defender 's "Bible":. The Chicago Defender not only encouraged people to migrate north for a better life, but to fight for their rights once they got there. The slogan of the paper and the first goal was "American race prejudice must be destroyed. He wrote, " Miscegenation began as soon as the African slaves were introduced into the colonial population and continues unabated to this day What's more, the opposition to intermarriage has heightened the interest and solidified the feelings of those who resent the injunction of racial distinction in their private and personal affairs.

The Defender actively promoted the northward migration of Black Southerners, particularly to Chicago; its columns not only reported on, but encouraged the Great Migration. Bud Billiken is a fiction character created by Abbott in During the Great Depression, Abbott featured Bud Billiken in the youth column of his newspaper, the Chicago Defender, as a symbol of pride, happiness, and hope for black residents.

This parade is an annual parade held in Chicago. It is the largest African American parade in the United States. The parade has since featured celebrities, politicians, businessmen, and many others. From errand boy to lawyer to publisher, as founder of one of the most read Black newspapers in the United States, Robert Sengstacke Abbott gave voice to a Black point of view that had been rendered mute in the early twentieth century.

Born in Georgia to a couple whose parents had been slaves, Abbott was still a baby when his father, Thomas Abbott, died of leukemia. Abbott graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia. With the assistance of J. Robert's mother and step-father had seven additional children, half-siblings to Robert. He married Edna Brown Denison in Simons Island , Georgia.

In , Robert Abbott was chosen as one of the "Undefeated 44," a compilation by a panel of editors, senior writers, contributors and other stakeholders at The Undefeated as part of its month-long Black History Month content initiative. Login to see how you relate to 33 million family members. Robert Sengstacke Abbott abt.